Romila Thapar’s ‘Ancient India, A Textbook of
History for Middle Schools’

NCERT: New Delhi (1987)

by Vishal Agarwal

25 November 2002

Opening Remarks -

This review deals with the
withdrawn NCERT textbook on history for Std. VI authored by the
eminent historian Romila Thapar

When the text of the first edition
of the book (published in 1966) is compared with its current edition
(July 1987, reprinted 13 times till January 2000), we do not find
any significant differences between the two. The changes are
primarily cosmetic – sentences added here and there, a word or two
changed, and so on. Some errors are corrected here, a subtle shift
in emphasis made elsewhere, and so on. This means that in 34 years
(1966 – 2000), Thapar does not see the need to revise completely her
understanding as well as her presentation of history of ancient
India to middle level school children of India.

As indicated in the ‘Foreword’ of
this first edition of the book, we find that the Chief Editor is S.
Gopal, whereas the other editors of the series are Romila Thapar, S.
Nurul Hasan and Satish Chandra. Nurul Hasan is dead, S. Gopal passed
away a few months ago, and Thapar, Gopal and Chandra have continued
to be authors or editors for NCERT even 35 years later. It appears
that India has not produced better or equally good historians who
could write history texts for school children, in all these 3½
decades! The hegemony of this small group of Marxist historians (or
their fellow travelers) in producing school texts for impressionable
schoolchildren in India all these years is quite alarming.

Unless stated otherwise, this
review pertains to the 1987 edition of the textbook that continued
to be in use till 2001. A few references will however be made to the
1966 edition for various reasons.

Chapter 0: The Study of Indian History –

The introductory chapter alone in
the current edition is quite different from the 1966 edition. It
stresses the current trends in historiography of ancient India –
such as a greater emphasis on the lives of common men rather than on
aristocrats and kings alone in older texts of history. It discusses
how history of ancient periods is reconstructed, the various sources
of information for the same, and how civilization in ancient India
could have begun. The chapter as such, makes very dry reading for a
6th Std. student, because there are so few illustrations. Study aids
such as well-demarcated sections with section headings are missing
in this chapter. A significant omission from the chapter is a map of
India, which could have greatly facilitated the understanding of the
essay type text.

The book makes no attempt to
relate the present with the past, even though the author remarks
(page 1) that one of the reasons for studying history is to
understand our present.

Chapter I: Early Man –

The chapter opens with a remark of
questionable accuracy -

“It took almost 300,000 years for man to change
from a food-gatherer to a food-producer.” (page 9)

As even the Marxist historian
Irfan Habib’s recent book points out, the Homo erectus had
probably started gathering food 700,00 to 500,00 years ago, or even
earlier. Since the Neolithic revolution involving large-scale
production of food occurred less about 10,000 years before present,
it is reasonable to suggest that man took 500,000 years or perhaps a
longer time to switch from food-gathering to food-producing, and not
a mere 300,000 years as the textbook teaches.

The chapter again makes very
boring reading, due to the paucity of illustrations. The text
differs from the 1966 edition only in a few sentences here and
there. The only significant addition, in my opinion, is a section on
the standard anthropological explanation for the rise of religious
beliefs in primitive human societies.

Chapter II: Man Takes to City Life -

Chapter II of the book deals with
the Harappan culture.

In her 1966 edition, Thapar had
made an erroneous remark –

“The earliest city to be discovered in India
was Mohenjo-daro on the river Indus in Sind. Further up the Indus
valley another ancient city was excavated and this was Harappa
near the modern Montgomery.” [THAPAR 1966:30].

This has fortunately been
corrected in the latest edition to read [THAPAR 1987:24] –

“The earliest city to be discovered in India
was Harappa in Punjab (Presently in Pakistan). Further down in the
Indus valley another ancient city was excavated and this was
Mohenjo-Daro in Sind.”

The present edition however still
states the wrong reason for calling the Indus Valley Civilization as
‘Harappa culture’ –

“The archaeologists called the civilization of
these ancient cities the Indus Valley Civilization, because both
of these cites and other sites sharing the same culture were found
in the Indus valley. But for the last forty years archaeologists
have been digging in other parts of northern and western India and
have found more cities that resemble those of the Indus valley.
Therefore the Indus Valley Civilization is now also called the
Harappa culture since the pattern of living in these resembles
that of Harappa….” (page 24).

The correct reason for calling the
Indus Valley Civilization alternately as the Harappan Culture or
Harappan Civilization is the accepted model of naming archaeological
cultures after the names of the sites where they are discovered or
first identified. In other words, the Indus Valley Civilization is
alternately referred to as Harappan Civilization because Harappa was
first site belonging to the culture that was discovered.

The paragraph ends with a
meaningless statement (page 24) –

“It is also called the Indus Civilization
because it spread over areas beyond the Indus valley”.

Perhaps, Thapar intended to
provide a rationale for distinguishing the term ‘Indus Civilization’
from the ‘Indus Valley Civilization’. The name ‘Indus Civilization’
was actually the title of the book on Mature Harappan Civilization
(with its fully developed urban character), written by Sir Mortimer
Wheeler, and first published in 1953 when the dense concentration of
Harappan sites along the Hakra-Ghaggar plains and in Gujarat was not
appreciated yet. In fact, there is a contemporary view that the name
of this civilization should be changed to ‘Indus-Sarasvati
Civilization’ or something similar. This view is dismissed by
Marxist historians in India as a Hindutva fantasy, but its logic is
nevertheless accepted by apolitical, sober American scholars such as
Jane McIntosh –

“…Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus”
Civilization was a misnomer – although the Indus had played a
major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost
Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its
banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity.
Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Sarswati
Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus
Civilization” should be seen as an abbreviation in which the
“Saraswati” is implied.”

The nomenclature is wrong, and
needs to be corrected as follows - Mespotamia comprises two parts –
the northern part called Assyria, and the southern called Babylonia.
The latter itself is subdivided into a northern region called Akkad
and the southern remainder known as Sumer. Babylonia is normally
taken to mean the flood plain of Tigris and Euphrates. In other
words, ‘in the region now
called Iraq’, only one of the civilizations
was Sumer.

On the storage of surplus food in
the Harappan Civilization, she writes (page 26) –

“More grain was grown that was actually eaten
by the people in the villages. This extra or surplus grain was
taken to the cities to feed the people of the towns and was stored
in large granaries or buildings specially made for storing grain.”

Later, in page 27 as well, Thapar
speculates the existence of the granary at Harappa. She remarks –

“In the citadel at Harappa, the most impressive
buildings were the granaries.”

While Thapar devotes several
sentences to a hypothetical description of how grain was transported
in boats along the river, the identification of certain structures
at Harappa, Lothal etc., as granaries is purely speculative and
tentative.

The chapter contains a few
pointless statements, which would bore the reader by their flatness.
For instance, in discussing the construction of Harappan homes,
THAPAR [page 29] says –

“The roofs were flat. There were few windows
but plenty of doors which were probably made of wood. The kitchen
had a fire-place …..”

The monotonous discussion could
have been made a lot more lively and memorable by relating it to
modern housing patterns in India. As an example of this approach,
let me cite an analogous passage describing Harappan houses –

“Despite the differences in size, the housing
in the major Indus settlements was generally of a high standard,
suggesting that even the least important individuals led a
comfortable existence. There were many features that were common
to all or most of the houses. Often, especially in the larger
houses, a small janitor’s room faced directly on to the house
doorway so that the visitor was first confronted and checked out
by a doorkeeper. Once within the house, the visitor would turn
immediately left or right into a passage that led into the
courtyard, the center of the household, as it is in modern India.”

“A stair led from the courtyard to the upper
part of the house – generally one and in some cases two upper
stories. The stair probably continued upward to give access to the
roof. Constructed of wooden beams covered by matting and plaster,
the roof provided an additional space for the family to sit, talk,
and sleep, as they do today….In some settlements, namely
Kalibangan, Banawali and Lothal, the houses also included a room
set apart as a domestic shrine, a feature also common in modern
Indian homes, although such shrines have not been found at Mohenjo
Daro.”

“Houses of any size at Mohenjo Daro would also
have a private well, sturdily constructed of wedge-shaped baked
bricks – those without a well of their own, however, were well
served by the public water supply…Other cities were less
generously provided with wells but also had an excellent drinking
water supply in the form of reservoirs and cisterns. The area
immediately inside the walls of the great settlement at Dholavira
was taken up by enormous reservoirs that covered around a fifth of
the enclosed area of the settlement. Water played an important –
indeed a vital part in the life of the Indus people, and their
management and use of the domestic and urban water supply were way
ahead of those of any other civilization of their time. Not for
another 2,000- odd years were hydraulic engineers of this caliber
to reemerge, with the Romans in the Old World and Chavin in the
New.”

“One of the most impressive rooms of the Indus
house was the bathroom…Bathing would have followed the custom that
still holds today, of pouring water over oneself with a small pot
– but in some house-holds there was the refinement of a “shower”:
a small stair along one side of the bathroom allowed another
person to ascend and pour a steady stream of water over the
bather. The bathroom floor, constructed of stone or sawn baked
bricks, allowed the water to flow off into the efficient drainage
system that served the city; via pottery drainpipes or drainage
chutes..Wastewater was collected into small open drains in the
lanes and from there flowed into the main drainage system. This
ran along the main streets hygienically covered by bricks or stone
slabs. At intervals there were inspection covers so that the free
flow of the drains could be checked and maintained.”

Understandably, the description
above might have been too long for a Std. VI textbook. Nevertheless,
the repeated references to the similarity of the Harappan dwellings
to modern Indian homes, and how the drainage system in the Harappan
cities was well ahead of its times, makes the reading more
interesting for students. On the other hand, Thapar’s book is
replete with such dry passages which make for a tedious reading, and
are difficult for the student to retain in his mind, or relate to
his own immediate society and environment.

And on the fall of Harappan
culture, she says [1966:40] –

“The Harappa culture lasted for about a
thousand years. By 1500 B.C., when the Aryans began to arrive in
India, the Harappa culture had collapsed. Why did this happen? The
cities may have been destroyed by floods, which came regularly; or
there may have been an epidemic or some terrible disease which
killed the people. The climate also began to change and the region
became more and more dry and like a desert. Or else the cities may
have been attacked and were unable to defend themselves.”

The Aryan Migration Theory that
Thapar alludes to is also contested. In fact, prominent
archaeologists, anthropologists as well as Indologists now dismiss
any large-scale migration of the ‘Aryans’ into India. Not only is
the concept derived from nineteenth century theories of ‘races’, it
is based on the assumption that languages spread only by migration
of peoples speaking them, as Thapar seems to hold.

There is no description of various
Chalcolithic cultures in the interior of India before she jumps
straight to the Aryans.

It is a real pity that
Thapar did not revise her book between 1987 and 2000, because the
chapter could have greatly benefited from the reports on excavations
at several new Harappan sites within India (such as Kunal, Malvan,
Surkotada, Dholavira etc.). A prominent omission is the fact that
the greatest concentration of these sites is found along the
Ghaggar-Hakra river basin, identified by most archaeologists and
non-Marxist historians today with the Vedic Sarasvati. Moreover,
there is hardly any attempt in this chapter to correlate features of
the Harappan culture with the present Indian culture.

Chapter III: Life in the Vedic Age -

It would be interesting to read
Romila Thapar’s presentation of the Vedic Aryans, in Chapter III,
titled “Life in the Vedic Age”, since historiography of this era has
become highly politicized in India.

The very first paragraph of the
chapter in the 1966 edition gave misleading information –

“Aryans came from outside India, from
north-eastern Iran and the region around the Caspian Sea. Those
that came to India are called Indo-Aryans to distinguish them from
the other Aryans who went to various parts of western Asia and
Europe.” [THAPAR 1966:43].

Fortunately, this has been
modified in the present edition (page 37) as –

“It was during this period that a people
speaking an Indo-Aryan language (which is the basis of Vedic
Sanskrit) emerged in north-western India. We do not know where
they came from; perhaps they came from north-eastern Iran or the
region near the Caspian Sea or Central Asia.”

The central idea, that there were
migrations of Indo-Aryan speakers into India from the North West
remains, despite the absence of evidence for any such migration
around 1500 BCE. Thapar then discusses the fact that the concept of
race as applied to Aryans has been called into question, and so on.
However, the entire description of Vedic peoples in her chapter is
nothing but a euphemistic version of the colonial-racist Aryan
Invasion Theory, showing how the ‘Aryans’ subjugated the ‘indigenous
Dasas and Dasyus’.

Thapar continues (page 37)–

“They are called ‘Indo-Aryans’ to distinguish
them from others who spoke various Aryan languages and went to
western Asia and Europe.”

The statement is pointless,
because the use of the word ‘Aryan’ to denote speakers of
Indo-European tongues other than Indo-Aryan has been given up
several decades ago. In fact, it is now held by scholars of
historical linguistics that the ‘Indo-Iranians’ split into
‘Iranians’ and ‘Indo-Aryans’. Moreover, Thapar is completely wrong
in asserting that there were no Indo-Aryans in Europe or in western
Asia. Trubachev has recently written a book on the Indo-Aryans in
Ukraine.

As for Indo-Aryan in western Asia,
certain words which clearly belong to some Indo-Aryan dialect, are
attested in archaeology even before the chariot driving manual. Even
with regard to the Hittite texts, it should be noted that although
they were written between the 16th and the 14th centuries BCE by and
large, it appears that some of them are copies of the originals that
were written between 17th and 16th centuries BCE.

Indo-Aryan names are also found in
a tablet dating from the Agade dynastic period (2300 –2100 BCE).
HARMATTA reconstructs two of the names in the table as ‘Arisen’ and
as ‘Somasen’.

Even R. S. SHARMA, another Marxist
historian like herself, has accepted the presence of Indo-Aryans in
western Asia in the third millennium BCE.

Therefore, Thapar’s explanation of
the term ‘Indo-Aryans’ is wrong.

Romila Thapar continues (page 38)
–

“The Aryans at first settled in the Punjab.
Gradually they moved south-eastwards into the region just north of
Delhi. There used to be a river flowing nearby called Sarasvati
but the water of this river has now dried up. Here they remained
for many years, and here they prepared the collection of hymns
known as the Veda. In the same region is the plain of Kurukshetra
where, it is believed, the great battle between the Pandavas and
the Kauravas was fought. Sometime later, the Aryans moved still
further eastwards into the Ganga valley, clearing the thick
forests as they went along.”

The mention of Sarasvati as a
river along whose banks the Aryans dwelt is very noteworthy.
Currently, Thapar’s colleagues like Irfan Habib and R S Sharma brand
anyone who mentions this river in north India as ‘Communal’, ‘Hindu
fascist’ and ‘anti-Dravidian’!

Thapar equates the Painted Grey
Ware Culture with the Vedic Age (page 38), and also adds (page 39) –

“Our knowledge of the Aryans is not based, as
it is in the case of the Harappa people, mostly on digging up
their habitation sites. We know about the Aryans from the hymns
and the poems and stories which they composed and which were
recited and passed on from generation to generation until they
were finally written down. We call this “literary evidence,” and
it provides the clues to their history. But recently digging in
certain places such as Hastinapur and Atranji-Khera (in western
Uttar Pradesh) has also supplied further information about their
culture.”

It is clear that the association
of Hastinapur and Atranji-Khera with the Aryans was apparently
accepted by Thapar herself in 1960’s and right up to 1987 at least,
on the basis of excavation reports by archaeologists like B. B. Lal.
However, subsequent to the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992,
Thapar has taken a somersault and she spares no efforts to lampoon
B. B. Lal for searching for Aryans in archaeological records. Ever
since Lal has taken the stand that the Babri mosque did stand atop a
pre-existing temple, the entire gang of ‘Secular’ historians has
been maligning him to no avail. Thapar’s criticism of Lal should be
seen in this context as a subtle, politically motivated attempt to
link Lal with the so-called Upper Caste Hindu fantasies of being
superior ‘Aryans’. In other words, considering that Thapar herself
linked the PGW culture at Hastinapur and Atranji-Khera with the
Aryans earlier, even in school textbooks, it is hypocritical and and
dishonest on her part to criticize B. B. Lal now on that score.

The sole reason for equating the
PGW with late Aryans is the assumption that the late Vedic
literature is contemporary with this ware, dated archaeologically in
the first half of the first millennium BC. Archaeologists however
find nothing particularly ‘Aryan’ about PGW. If PGW represents the
Indo-Aryans then, according to accepted theories, similar or
antecedent/precursor types of pottery should be located west of the
Ganga-Yamuna region on the Iranian Plateau. But, B. K. THAPAR has
noted the absence of any PGW antecedent types of pottery anywhere
along the route supposedly taken by the Aryans, and he has outlined
the chronological problems associated with accounts. Similarly,
Dilip CHAKRABARTI points out that the traits of PGW indicates an
eastern, rather than a western origin –

“The Painted Grey Ware culture,
thus, with its traits of rice cultivation and the use of domestic
pig and buffalo seems to suggest a culture distinctly eastern in
bias and not a western one as its suggested Aryan authorship would
indicate.”

Jim SHAFFER states some additional
objections against relating PGW with late Aryans. According to
Shireen RATNAGAR, it is even debatable if the PGW constitutes a
‘culture’.

We see here how the failure to
revise textbooks in a timely and regular manner has resulted in
teaching of outdated theories to students.

Thapar obviously does not fail to
mention that Vedic Aryans ate beef, even in her brief discussion on
their foot habits (pp. 40-41)–

“The cow held pride of place among the animals
because the Aryans were dependent on the produce of the cow. In
fact, for special guests beef was served as a mark of honour
(although in later centuries, brahmanas were forbidden to eat
beef).”

The assertion that only Brahmins
were forbidden to eat beef, and not other sections of the Indian
society seems to be politically motivated, because it promotes anti-Brahminism,
and would tend to discredit any modern day anti-cow-slaughter
movements in India as ‘Brahminical’. Thapar has obviously not
offered any proof that other sections of the Indian society, the
Kshatriyas and Vaishyas for instance, were allowed to eat beef in
‘later centuries’.

And then, Thapar perpetuates this
Aryan fantasy of their love for horses (Page 41) –

“The horse is an animal which was not native to
India and was brought in by the Aryans from Iran and Central Asia.
The horse was used largely for drawing chariots. Chariot racing
was a favourite amusement. The chariot-maker was a respected
member of the society.”

The notion that the horse was
brought to India only by the Aryans has been controverted by
archaeology. Remains of horses have been found in several Harappan
sites and have been identified as such by competent zoologists at
Kuntasi, Shikarpur, Malvan etc.

The statement that the chariot
maker was a respectable member of the Vedic society is inaccurate,
because by the later Vedic age, his ‘twice-born’ status was
certainly brought into question. Clearly, Thapar has confounded the
early Vedic Age (i.e., the time of Rigveda) with the later Vedic
age.

The assertion that chariot racing
was a favorite amusement of the Aryans, is also questionable,
despite the fact that many antiquated books mention it. In fact, the
impression one gets on reading the mention of chariots in the Vedas
is that it was reserved for gods, for the elites and for ritual and
military purposes. Its use for recreational chariot races was rather
rare.

The author then proceeds to
describe the Aryan invasion in a fully blown manner for
impressionable young students (page 41)–

“The Aryans and the Dasyus – The Aryans,
when they settled in various parts of north India, were hostile to
the indigenous people whom they referred to as ‘Dasas’ and ‘Dasyus’.
The Dasas and Dasyus did not worship the same gods as the Aryans
and spoke a language which was different from Vedic Sanskrit. Some
Dasa chiefs were treated with great respect, but many of the Dasa
people were enslaved so that eventually the word ‘dasa’ came to
mean slave. The Dasas who were enslaved had to do the most
difficult and lowly work and were not treated kindly. But the
Aryans also mixed with local people and married into local
families. The word ‘Aryan’ came to refer to any person who was
respected.”

In reality, the Vedic texts do not
offer any evidence that the Aryans were migrants or invaders in
India, nor do they suggest or state that the Dasas were indigenous
Indians. Such an inference can be drawn only from the prior
assumption of the Aryan Invasion Theory.

There is also no evidence that the
Dasa were the native Indians who were enslaved, and forced to do all
the menial work. The use of the word ‘slave’ to describe them in the
Rigvedic context is most unfortunate, as it creates the impression
the economy in the Vedic Age was based on production by enslaved
people. Rather, at best, the impression one gets from the Vedic
texts is one of dasas being domestic servants. Many Indologists also
equate Dasas with earlier Indo-Aryan migrants in India and Iran, or
with the old Iranians.

The statement that the Dasas spoke
a language that was different from the Vedic Aryans, is also based
on tendentious and erroneous interpretations of Rigveda.

Thapar’s description is therefore
crude and draws too much on antiquated colonial-racist theories.

It would be interesting to
reproduce here the parallel passages of the earlier edition of her
book -

“The Aryans and the Dasyus When the
Aryans first arrived in India, they had to fight for land with the
people already living in India. These people were called the
Dasyus or Dasas. The Aryans were fair-skinned and the Dasyus are
described as being dark-skinned with flat noses. The Dasyus did
not worship the same gods as the Aryans. They spoke a language
which the Aryans did not understand, because the latter spoke
Sanskrit. The Aryans who fought and defeated the Dasyus did not
treat them kindly and enslaved many of them. The Dasyus had to
work for the Aryans and were made to do the most difficult and
lowly work. The Aryans made it a rule that no Aryan could marry a
Dasyu.” [THAPAR 1966:48].

The differences between the two
versions are too obvious to be repeated here.

According to this older edition of
the textbook, the Aryans even practiced apartheid –

“Society The Aryans and the Dasyus lived
in separate parts of the same village and in the beginning they
were not allowed to mix with one another. The Aryans were also
divided amongst themselves into three classes. The most powerful
people were the king and his warriors who were also called
kshatriyas. Equally important were the priests or brahmans;
and then came the craftsmen and cultivators or vaishyas.
There was in addition a fourth group called the shudras.
This consisted of Dasyus and those Aryans who had mixed with the
Dasyus and married Dasyus; so they were looked down upon…” [THAPAR
1966:48].

In the current edition, the last
sentence is presented in the following edited version (page 42) –

“This consisted of Dasyus and those Aryans who
were looked down upon”.

Although this version is more
correct, it still relies on the twin equations of ‘Aryans =
foreigners’ and ‘Dasyus = indigenous Indians’.

Every possible opportunity is
availed of by Thapar to ridicule or mock Vedic learning. For
instance, she picks up 1 out of more than 1000 hymns in Rigveda, and
then misinterprets it (page 42)

“…Young boys stayed with the priests who taught
them how to recite the hymns of the Vedas. There is an amusing
description of the pupils in one of the hymns. It is said that the
pupils repeating the lesson after the teacher sound like frogs
croaking before the coming of the rains.”

The view that Rigveda VII.103,
alluded to by Thapar above, is somehow ‘amusing’ is refuted by
current scholarship, which sees a fairly serious rain-charm here. In
fact, no derision of Veda reciting Brahmins is implied in this hymn
at all.

It is unfortunate that as a
specialist in ancient Indian history, Thapar is ignorant of the
language of the original texts (such as the Vedas) or even of
significant secondary literature on them.

The description of the Vedic
religion is quite reductionist (page 43-44) and might well have been
taken from a Christian Missionary propaganda booklet. There is no
attempt to related Vedic religion with modern Hindu religious
practices, an omission which contributes to dullness of reading the
chapter.

Chapter IV- India: From 600 B.C. to 400 B.C. -

The fourth chapter deals with the
rise of the Kingdom of Magadha. Unfortunately, here also we see no
description of culture and civilization in Peninsular India and the
focus is still the Ganga valley.

“Buddhism and Jainism had followers among the
craftsmen, traders, peasants and untouchables, because they felt
that these religions were not difficult to practice. The brahmans
on the other hand had made their religion difficult to practice
because of the many ceremonies and rituals…..”

The statement has a subtle bias
against the Brahmin community. It could have been ignored as a
statement of a historical fact, but alarmingly, the subtle bias
appears so often in the text that the student can scarcely miss her
emphasis on the Brahminical hegemony. Thus, the Brahmins are
mentioned as recorders of laws that promoted casteism and
discrimination against lower castes (page 53), they bestowed divine
right to rule upon kings only if they submitted to Brahminical
ceremonies (page 50), their influence was great because they were
king’s advisors and without them the king could not rule (page 50),
the king collected taxes for various reasons among with the support
of Brahmins is mentioned (page 50), as priests they became
messengers between gods and men, and ‘so were naturally powerful’
(page 43), the Brahmins became more important than other castes, and
the kshatriyas in particular, by ‘making
religion very important’ (page 42), only the
Brahmins were forbidden to eat beef in later ages (pages 40-41) and
so on.

It is surprising that there is
hardly any worthwhile discussion of Upanishadic doctrines in the
book although much space is devoted to Jainism and Buddhism. One
would expect that after frequent criticisms of Vedic ritual in
subtle and not so subtle ways in her textbook, Thapar would have
dwelt upon the advantages or the positive aspects of Upanishadic
thought. However, any positive presentation of any aspect of
Hinduism and Hindu spirituality as such has no place in Indian
‘secularism’, and therefore the omission is not surprising.

Chapter V – The Mauryan Empire:

While discussing the Ashokan
edicts, a subtle bias is created in the minds of students by stating
that while Prakrit was spoken by the common people, whereas Sanskrit
was spoken by the educated upper classes (page 62) where there is
actually no need to say so. Thapar’s own ideological and political
slant becomes obvious when one notices how she fails to mention that
the Buddhists and Jains themselves composed their texts in Sanskrit
in later times, even when she could have done so later in Chapter
VI.

Rather, in Chapter VIII of the
textbook, Thapar does not fail to mention that -

“The Vedic religious texts were in Sanskrit
which only the priests and the few who were educated could
understand…..Writers such as Dandin wrote in Sanskrit, since they
were writing for the court circles and the upper castes.” (page
114)

She never asks how many Buddhists
and Jains continued to understand Pali and Prakrit in later
centuries, or how many Muslims in India understood Arabic, the
language of Koran. This constant linkage of Sanskrit with ‘upper
castes’ and ‘Brahmins’ is designed to create hatred against the
beautiful language in the impressionable minds of students.

The lengthy description of the
rule and policies of Ashoka is inspiring. After all, he along with
Emperor Akbar, are the two greatest royal heroes of the ‘secular’
historians. No Hindu ruler even comes close to them in greatness.

Chapter VI: India from 200 B.C. to A.D. 300 –

The chapter has a misleading
statement towards its beginning (page 71)–

“India, South of the Vindhya mountain and the
Narmada river was known in ancient times as Daksinapatha; now it
is called the Deccan. South of the Deccan is the land of the
Dravidian speaking people.”

The statement is false because
there are crores of speakers of Dravidian languages (Kannanda and
Telugu) even on the Deccan plateau. Anyway, it is still an
improvement over what she wrote in the first edition, where she
seemed to subscribe to the Aryan-Dravidian binary with regard to
Indian culture and population. For instance, she said [THAPAR
1966:83] –

“India south of the Vindhya mountains and the
Narmada river was known in ancient times as Dakshinapatha; now it
is called the Deccan. South of the Deccan is the land of the
Dravids or Tamils. Form ancient times these lands were the homes
of Indian peoples of non-Aryan origins….”

On page 78, she makes an
anachronistic statement –

“The southeast region came to be the land of
the Tamils, because Tamil was the language spoken there”.

In reality, Tamil and Malayalam
did not become two separate languages till the end of the first
millennium A.D., so that even the southwest region was very well a
part of the ‘land of Tamils’ in the period of time under discussion.

On page 83, Thapar unnecessarily
pays credence to the legend that Christianity arrived in India in
the first century A.D. As a historian, she should have been a little
more skeptical because competent scholars reject this legend and
place the arrival of Christianity into India at least 3 centuries
later. Apparently, excessive skepticism must be practiced by secular
historians when Hinduism is discussed, but the standards can be
relaxed a little for other faiths.

Chapter 7: The Age of the Guptas -

The 1966 edition of the textbook
mentioned that the Gupta period has been referred to sometimes as
the “Golden Age” because this period saw great achievements of
Indian culture [1966:101]. The present edition however omits the
phrase, consistent with Marxist historiography of D. D. Kosambi, D.
N. Jha and other Marxist historians who find all kinds of pedantic
reasons for downgrading the evaluation of this period, and reject
the term ‘Golden Age’.

Unlike Jha, Thapar does not
discuss in detail why the period should not be termed as the ‘Golden
Age’, since this very phrase is missing in the text. Rather, she
summarizes some of the reasons against this nomenclature (page 103,
last para) that are found in Jha’s books on ancient India. An
obvious but unstated reason that prevents Thapar et al from
labeling the Gupta Age as the Golden Age is their phobia of Hindu
pride and Hindu Nationalism. These historians think that they could
promote Hindu fundamentalism in India even by remotely alluding to
the greatness and glory of any period of Indian history that could
be linked with Hinduism.

Nor surprisingly, Thapar now
includes the following ‘disclaimer’ type statement in her textbook,
a statement that was absent in the first edition of the book -

“In the Gupta period, Hinduism became a
powerful religion. The word ‘Hindu’ was however not used until a
later time by the Arabs when they referred to the people of Hind,
i.e., India. The Hindus were worshippers of Shiva, Shakti and
Vishnu. Since the worship of Shiva and Vishnu became very popular
at this time, we refer to it as Hinduism even during the Gupta
period.”

Thapar is wrong in sating that the
word ‘Hindu’ was used first by Arabs. It was first used by the
Persians, and is used to refer to people of India in the
inscriptions of the Persian Emperor Darius I as early as 6th century
B.C.E. Cognates of ‘Hindu’ and ‘India’ also occur in Chinese and
Greek writings several centuries before Arabs used the words.

One wonders why Thapar is so
extra- cautious here to point out the anachronistic usage of the
word ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ by her, when her entire textbook is so
full of such anachronistic terms? Was the ‘Kashmir valley’ termed as
such in prehistoric times (pg. 12)? Did ‘India’ exist as an entity
(religious, cultural or political) in pre-Harappan times (pg. 13)?
Is there any evidence for the existence of ‘Jainism’ and ‘Buddhism’
before 400 B.C. (chapter 4) more than there is evidence for the
existence of ‘Hinduism’ in the Gupta Age? Did the Kushanas arrive
from the ‘Chinese Turkestan’ (pg. 85) in the first century A.D.? Did
Zoroaster really preach ‘Zoroastrianism’ (pg. 111) in ‘Iran’,
‘sometime before 600 B.C., as the textbook claims?

My point is that the ancient past
is necessarily described with the help of modern terms and names,
and this is obviously the case with Thapar’s textbook also. However,
the selective manner in which Thapar makes a special case of the
late nature of the word ‘Hinduism’ clearly indicates that she wishes
to indoctrinate the Hindu students that their faith is not as old as
they believe it to be and that their religion as such did not exist
as such before the Gupta Age.

It is really amusing to see how
Thapar and other Marxist historians first accept the hegemony of
Protestant Christian terminology in defining religious ‘isms’ and
then proceed to declare that the religion ‘Hinduism’ did not
exist till recent centuries. From an orthodox Hindu perspective, one
could assert even today that the Semitic religions are nothing more
than ‘panthas’ or sects in relation to Sanatana Dharma. So
why impose Western and Eurocentric concepts on Indian students? One
could argue that the very category ‘religion’ is inappropriate to
describe the sacred traditions of India and China, just as the
category ‘dharma’ may not apply to Christianity, Judaism and
Islam.

Chapter VIII: The Age of Smaller Kingdoms –

Thapar states (page 111) that
Zoroaster preached sometime before 600 B.C., a date that is clearly
rejected by most Indologists and Iranists. Most now settle for 900
BCE or even a few centuries earlier.

Chapter IX: India and the World -

The 9th chapter, which is the last
one in the book, has a 3 page long section on Islam which summarizes
the historical evolution of the religion as well as its religious
tenets. This was totally unnecessary as it does not have much of a
bearing on ancient Indian history. It will be noted that while long
sections in the book have been devoted to Buddhism, Jainism and
Islam, the references to Hinduism are perfunctory or incidental.
There is absolutely no meaningful description of doctrines of the
Upanishads, the Gita, the Darshanas, or of the rise of Vedanta.
There is not even a mention of Adi-Shankaracharya, who lived in the
period covered by the text. Or even a brief summary of the contents
of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, except a statement that they
are records of battles between Aryan chieftains and that they were
redacted in the Gupta period.

Thapar presents the advent of
Islam to Indiar singularly as an enriching experiencing. The
destruction brought by Islamic armies is totally blacked out. In
fact, the advent of Islam to India is balanced with the advent of
Buddhism/Hinduism in South East Asia in the following words (page
125) –

“The Arabs not only introduced Islam but also a
number of new cultural influences to India, which were to grow and
develop in later centuries. Thus, on one side, India was exporting
its culture and, on the other side, it was importing a new
culture.”

Need I even comment on this false
equation?

Closing Remarks –

I would like to end this review
with the confession that as a sixth grade student in 1981-82, I too
read an earlier version of the textbook at school, because it was
mandatory reading. I was a good student, and have a clear
recollection that I had found the text boring, verbose, tedious and
also difficult to relate to my surroundings. There was practically
nothing in the text that enthused me to study more on the subject.
The story in the text was quite detached, dispassionate to the
extent that it was dejecting, and demotivating. The prose was
stilted, and dense. There was just too much material that a student
of Std. VI could grasp and retain. When I read the textbook as a
much mature person today, I can articulate my impressions much
better, and add a critique of the text as well.

When the two editions (1966 and
1987/2000) of the textbook are compared, as I have done here in a
partial manner, one is simply amazed to see how similar they are, as
if NCERT history is more sanatana than Hinduism. The
instances of errors (not all of which are listed in this review) are
more in the first edition, but a considerable number continued to
exist in the 1987 edition that continued to be used at least till
2000.

The textbooks have a very subtle
slant against Brahmins, Hinduism, Sanskrit, Vedas and Hindu
Philosophy and religion as such. The bias, which is certainly
related to the author’s Marxist affiliations, appears in the form of

· A selective overemphasis of
certain aspects of ancient India (such as Brahminical hegemony,
or the elitist status of Sanskrit),

· Misrepresentation of certain
facts or blatant errors (notably in the treatment of Vedic
Aryans), suppression of inconvenient facts (such as the
devastation brought by Islamic armies),

· A one sided presentation
(such as excessive dwelling on the negative aspects alone of
Vedic ritual)

· A lack of discussion on
aspects of Hinduism (such as Upanishadic philosophy, or the
themes of Ramayana and Mahabharata), other than the sectarian
worship of Vishnu and Shiva.

There is no significant attempt in
the textbook to relate India’s past with our present. The
illustrations in the book are too few, to begin with. They are not
chosen judiciously (some instances are pointed out by me in notes on
earlier chapters) and are often not referred to directly in the text
as such.

These remarks of mine should be
considered in the context of the recent controversy over the recall
of the old NCERT history textbooks by the NDA government, and their
replacement by texts written by a different set of authors.
Naturally, the particular set of historians (Thapar, Satish Chandra,
Bipin Chandra etc.) whose hegemony lasting over than 3 decades has
been terminated thereby, are quite upset and have launched a
secular Jihad against the Government of India. In this political
controversy however, an important question that needs to be
considered is this – “How are the new textbooks?”

As soon as the new textbooks were
released by the NCERT, the old authors predictably went on an error
finding spree and a media blitzkrieg with the help of their younger
Marxist cohorts like D. N. Jha and K. Shrimali, and Communist
institutions like SAHMAT. They did manage to find a few errors.
Unfortunately for them, the NCERT Director Mr. J. S. Rajput promptly
offered to correct them. As I have noted in review above, Thapar’s
book has not been free of errors either. In fact, many errors
continued to occur all through 34 years (1966-2000). So, we must ask
the students how the new textbooks fare, with regard to readability,
presentation of the material, the volume of facts presented and so
on. In this regard, I will merely reproduce an assessment of the new
textbooks that appeared on the Internet soon after they were
released –

Friends,

I borrowed from a friend of mine, two of the
new textbooks released by NCERT - "India and the World," Social
Sciences Textbook for Class VI and "Contemporary India" for class
IX The best part is that I didn't fall asleep while browsing
through them! (which was the distinguishing feature of many of the
works of our eminent historians).

Thanks mainly to the lively and copious
illustrations throughout the books and the straightforward and
simple manner in which concepts have been explained.

Glancing through them it will not be difficult
to understand why there is such a hue and cry about these new
textbooks. Many are busy right now picking as many errors as they
can from these textbooks (see for example the recent article in
Hindustan Times). There are errors of course, I myself found two
significant errors. But who has written a book without having to
make a list of errata later?

I am confident that students will welcome these
books whole-heartedly, provided our politicians and eminent
historians stop sitting over them.

I will leave it to the reader to
read the new textbooks, compare them with the old ones, and form his
own independent opinion.

Romila Thapar ‘revised’ the
textbook assigned to her in 1987 with only a few minor, primarily
cosmetic changes to the 1966 edition. This ‘revised’ textbook,
already outdated in 1987, was then allowed to continue in thousands
of schools without any further revision for at least 14 more years,
till the year 2001.

The task of imparting quality
education to intermediate school children is a very important
building block in the creation of any progressive nation. It is a
very important responsibility vested with the authors of these study
materials. Textbooks should be revised and updated periodically and
regularly, at least once every five years. The revisions should be
guided by advances in the field of study concerned, not by one’s
political affiliations. The fact that Romila Thapar has failed to
revise textbooks authored by her in a timely fashion, and has
continued to brainwash generations of impressionable school students
with slanted versions of history is a serious dereliction of duty.
Writing textbooks for school children in one’s country is a
privilege, a privilege that Thapar has abused severely to promote
her own political agendas, and to indulge in a subtle hate-mongering
against Hindus and their faith.

One hopes therefore, that at the
present political dispensation will take the task of educating
Indian school- children more seriously, and the new authors will
revise their own textbooks more frequently, and keep them free of
ideological slants and political propaganda.

THE END

1. The textbook was mandatory reading for students of Standard
VI in schools affiliated to the CBSE.

2. Dr. Nurul Hasan was a politician, the
Education Minister appointed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Concerning him and his protégés, archaeologist Dilip Chakrabarti
remarks (on page 13 of Colonial Indology. Munshiram
Manoharlal: New Delhi, 1997) – “To thwart the strength of the old
Congress party stalwarts, the then Prime Minister of the country,
Mrs. Indira Gandhi, came to depend significantly on the support of
the ‘left’ political parties, and recruited in the process to her
cabinet a History professor, putting him in charge of education.
This professor, an Oxford D.Phil with a firm belief in the
‘progressive’, i.e., ‘left’ ideas, was also the son of an
important government functionary of British India and related by
marriage to one of the powerful ‘native’ princely houses of the
north. Till his date in harness as the governor of a
left-controlled Indian state, he acted as the patron saint of a
wide variety of historians claiming ‘progressive’ political
beliefs and hoping for a slice of the establishment cake.”

3. On page 2, there is a chart showing some Indian scripts.
Curiously, the 1966 edition of the book omitted the Devanagari
script! This omission of the most widely prevalent script of India
has been rectified in the current edition.

4. See pgs. 25-27 of HABIB, Irfan. 2001. People’s History of
India, vol I (Prehistory). Tulika: New Delhi.

7. See for instance, the following, for the use
of this standardized nomenclature - ZARINS, Juris. 1976. The
Domestication of Equidae in Third Millennium B.C. Mesopotamia.
A Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago: Chicago

8. One might argue that Sumer is mentioned
specifically by Thapar because of its trade relations with
Harappan Civilization. Such an argument would be incorrect,
because she mentions Egyptian Civilization in the same paragraph,
even though this civilization did not trade with the Harappans.
Therefore, the sentence mentioning Sumer as a civilization ‘in the
region now called Iraq’ is misleading and inaccurate, because it
overlooks the presence of Babylonian, Akkadian and other
civilizations in that region.

9. In fact, Thapar herself has implied in a
recent article [‘The Rgveda-Encapsulating Social Change.’
Pg. 11-40 inPANIKKAR, K. N.; Byres, Terence J., Patnaik,
Usha(eds.). 2000. The Making of History – Essays
Presented to Irfan Habib. Tulika: New Delhi] that the
identification of the structures as granaries is tentative. She
says - “Huge storage structures have been identified, possibly
as granaries or as warehouses.” (pg. 13) – emphasis mine.

11. For instance, on page 6 of the text, she remarks – “One way
of discovering who came from where is by studying the languages of
an area. People who move or migrate carry their language with
them…”

12. This back-door revival of the Aryan
Invasion Theory by Thapar et al even in her earlier publications
has not fooled many people. Speaking of an old publication of
hers, for instance, Edmund LEACH [LEACH, Edmund. 1990. Aryan
Invasions Over Four Millennia. in E. Ohnuki-Tierney (ed.),
Culture Through Time, Anthropological Approaches. Stanford
University Press: Stanford] remarks – “Why is this sort of thing
so attractive? Who finds it attractive? Why has the development of
early Sanskrit come to be so dogmatically associated with an Aryan
invasion? In some cases, the association seems to be matter of
intellectual inertia. Thus, Thapar (1969), who provides a valuable
survey of the evidence then available, clearly finds the whole
‘movement of peoples’ argument a nuisance, but at the end of the
day she falls into line.”

13. The assertion is certainly wrong, if we hold, as Thapar
does, that a migration of peoples is essential for transmission of
languages from one part of the world to another.

14. TRUBACHEV, Oleg N., 1999: Indoarica, Nauka, Moscow.
The book is in Russian.

18. The statement also occurs in the 1966 edition of the book,
pp. 43-44

19. For instance, she says – “The theory of the
Aryan race has not only served cultural nationalism in India but
continues to serve Hindu revivalism and, inversely anti-Brahmin
movements. At the academic level, the insistence on ascribing
Indo-European roots to all aspects of Vedic culture has acted as a
restraint on the analysis of mythology, religion and cultural
symbols from the historical point of view. The intellectual
history of a period as rich as that of Upanishads and early
Buddhism, approximately the mid-first millennium BC, has been
hemmed in by the constraints of seeing it in terms of an internal
movement among dissident Aryans, rather than from the more
meaningful perspective of a period of seminal change. The
perennial search for ‘the Aryans’ continues apace, with
archaeologists still attempting to identify a variety of
archaeological cultures as Aryan.” (pg. 18 of the article
‘Ideology and Interpretation of Early Indian History’, pp. 1-22 in
Section I of THAPAR, Romila. 2000. History and Beyond.
Oxford University Press; New Delhi)

20. B. B. Lal himself has given up his earlier
linkage of the PGW with Aryans. In fact, he now is a staunch
opponent of the Aryan Invasion Theory or its euphemistic versions
these days, which makes him an even greater enemy of Thapar and
her fellow Marxist historians.

23. Pg. 85 in SHAFFER, Jim G. 1984. The
Indo-Aryan Invasions - Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality.
pp. 77-90 in John R. Lukacs (ed.), “The People of South Asia -
The Biological Anthropology of India, Pakistan, and Nepal”.
Plenum Press: New York and London

28. Similary, it might be pointed out that PGW
is not equated generally with Vedic Age per se, as Thapar
has done in the textbook. Rather, it has equated with the ‘Later
Vedic Period’. The status of the ‘rathakara’ became so
dubious in the later Vedic period that it was debated whether he
even has the right to perform the agnyadhana rite.

29. Mercifully, Thapar leaves out the following
misleading statement present in the earlier version of her book
[1966:48] –“

The chariot has
been described often in the hymns. It was a light two-wheeled
chariot which was exciting to race, and was useful in battle.”
The reality is that the Vedic chariot is typically described in
hyberbolic terms as a vehicle of the gods with all types of
fantastic features. Thus, it is made of gold (Rigveda 1.30.16),
the chariot of Ashwins is pulled by three horses (Rigveda 1.34.9
etc.), it is pulled by 10 horses (Rigveda 2.18.4), it carries 67
people (Rigveda 3.6.9). Chariots are even said to be pulled by
bullocks (Rigveda 10.131.3) and so on. On the rarity of chariots
in the Rigvedic milieu, Edmund LEACH remarks
(ibid) – “It is true that the two-wheeled chariot, in a crude
form, is likely to have been invented in Central Asia. But the
appearance of chariots as grave goods and the pictorial
representation of chariots in other contexts suggest that it was a
rare object, a ceremonial carriage rather than a piece of normal
military equipment. The characters in the Rgveda ride in chariots
because they are divine beings.”

30. Interestingly, in her other publications,
Thapar even suggests dropping the use of the word ‘Arya’ to denote
a race or a group of people – “The notion of an Aryan race
identified on the basis of an Aryan language has now been
discarded. Language and race are distinctly different categories.
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to discard the term ‘Aryan’
as well, using only Indo-Aryan to identify the language, or else
staying strictly within the definition of arya from
Sanskrit texts where it is a linguistic and social qualifier,
without the overlay of nineteenth century theories.” Page 1134 in
THAPAR, Romila. 2000. ‘The Theory of Aryan Race in India- History
and Politics’, pages 1108 to 1140 in THAPAR, Romila. 2000.
Cultural Pasts. Oxford University Press: Delhi [According to
the footnote on page 1108, this paper is an expanded version of
the text of a lecture delivered at the 40th International
Conference of Eastern Studies in Tokyo, 26 May 1995].

31. For instance, on page 410 of her earlier
article ‘The Image of the Barbarian in Ancient India’
(Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 13.4,
October 1971, pp. 408-436) Romila THAPAR says – “In the Rg Veda,
the earliest of the Vedic texts, there is no mention of the
mleccha as such but there are references to the Dasa or the
Dasyu, the local peoples who were subordinated and regarded as
alien and barbaric. They are compared with demons, with one
reference to being black-skinned (krsna-tvaca) and snub
nosed, speaking a strange language or speaking incorrectly (mrdhra-vac)
…..”. If this is not the full blown racist-colonial Aryan Invasion
Theory, what else is it?

32. The reader must not think that it is
impossible to write a history for the Vedic period without
invoking the Aryan Invasion Theory or its euphemistic versions.
Such works have indeed been written by competent scholars, and as
an example, one may refer to CHAKRABARTI, Dilip, K. 1999.
India- An Archaeological History, Paleolithic Beginnings to Early
Historic Foundations. Oxford University Press: New Delhi

33. See pg. 208 of MAURER, Walter H. 1986.
Pinnacles of India’s Past – Selections from the Rgveda. University
of Pennsylvania Studies on South Asia, vol. 2. John Benjamin’s
Publishing Company: Amsterdam/Philadephia.

34. See the extensive discussion on the purport
of this hymn in H. D. VELANKAR’s Rgveda Mandala VII,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan: Bombay (1963).

35. Moreover, the Vedic religion is
consistently equated with Brahmins, and therefore gets condemned
in the minds of impressionable students ‘by guilt of association’
with the crafty Brahmins.

36. Amongst the various faults of Vedic rituals
mentioned by Thapar, bluntly or subtly, are that they made
religion difficult to practice, promoted Brahminical hegemony,
promoted the theory of the divine right of kings to rule, promoted
superstition, were costly and an unnecessary drain on cattle and
other wealth, were too lengthy, were a fiction created by crafty
Brahmins and so on. Not one positive role of rituals in human life
is mentioned. The entire treatment of Vedic ritualism is therefore
slanted and makes the student averse towards Vedic religion per
se.

37. For a refutation of the thesis of Indian
Marxist historians that the Gupta Period was not a Golden Age,
refer pp. 74-95 of GOYAK, Shankar. 2000. Marxist Interpretation
of Ancient Indian History. Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Instute: Pune.

38. The statement is clearly motivated by
Thapar’s political considerations, her antipathy towards Hindus
and Hinduism and are a subtle form of hate-mongering against
Hinduism that permeates the textbook as such. It should be seen in
the light of her other political writings in recent years, such as
‘Syndicated Hinduism’, ‘Syndicated Moksha’, ‘Imagined
Communities’, ‘The Tyranny of Labels’ and so on. It is really
disturbing to see how school children have been subjected to such
a subtle propaganda all these years through their history
textbooks published by the NCERT.

40. One wonders why Thapar did not use some other better name
such as ‘Sinkiang’ rather than ‘Chinese Turkestan’, even if she
wanted to use modern names of places.

41. This statement is made in the context of the Vedic Age.

42. S. K. GUPTA [1998. The Prejudiced Past,
Rewriting Indian History – Some Reflections on Concept. Indus
Publishing Company: New Delhi, pg. 20] closes his assessment of
Marxist historiography with the following words – “The Marxist
historians do lay a lot emphasis on pluralism, nationalities, wide
variety of identities, including the autochthonous groups, yet
they deny the significance of culture, tradition, religion –
regarded by others as a social force – and indulge in shibboleths
and rhetoric rooted in their universal framework of historical
materialism. Thus, the kind of empathy one requires in mapping the
social reality and understanding a people’s past remains largely
missing.” This characterization of Marxist historiography in India
is definitely applicable to Thapar’s perfunctory treatment of
Hinduism in the textbook.

43. See the news item ‘Revised Textbooks for
Class VI and IX Ready’, in the Internet Edition of The Pioneer,
dt. 31 October 2002.

44. And sometimes, clearly politically motivated.

45. Since I have not examined any intermediate versions or
editions of the textbook, I cannot comment in the revisions
contained in them. Nevertheless, they could not have been numerous
or even significant considering that the 1987 edition is so
similar to the very first edition printed in 1966.

46. One can hardly attribute a lack of time on
her part for not being able to revise the textbooks in a timely
fashion. After all, she has never been found wanting when it came
to political propaganda in the form of addressing press
conferences hosted by Communist organizations like SAHMAT, or
contributing articles to Leftist publications such as ‘Frontline’.